Fifteen years ago Julie Bindel read 20 Mills & Boon novels for a dissertation on "romantic fiction and the rape myth". On the basis of that, and the cover blurbs for some current Mills & Boon romances, she castigates these books as "misogynistic hate speech" that "feed directly into some women's sense of themselves as lesser beings, as creatures desperate to be dominated"
(Mills & Boon: 100 years of heaven or hell?, December 5

It was, Bindel says, the easiest piece of research she has ever done, concluding: "This is what heterosexual romantic fiction promotes - the sexual submission of women to men. M&B novels are full of patriarchal propaganda." Would other researchers of popular culture extrapolate from early-1990s research to the same field today? Times change. One of the reasons Mills & Boon novels have survived and flourished for 100 years is their very ability to reflect the changing lives and fantasies of modern women.

Bindel quotes the blurb of my novel Virgin Slave, Barbarian King (M&B, January 2008): "Julia Livia Rufa is horrified when barbarians invade Rome and steal everything in sight. But she doesn't expect to be among the taken! As Wulfric's woman, she's ordered to keep house for the uncivilised marauders. Soon, though, Julia realises that she's more free as a slave than she ever was as a sheltered Roman virgin."

I write historical romance, setting stories within the framework of the values and standards of the period. This novel is set in AD410, when the Visigoths sacked Rome. Slavery was a fact of classical and barbarian societies. It gave me a context to bring together two people of entirely different backgrounds, cultures and value systems and to explore the mutual attraction between them. Wrenched from the restrictive and patriarchal Roman society which confined women and gave them no say in civic life, Julia was able to find a new freedom in a society that gave women a status that was unheard of among Romans.

All Mills & Boon authors, writing for the varied lines - a broad spectrum of contemporary stories as well as the historical novels - aim to meet the fantasies and interests of their readers within parameters they feel comfortable with. My heroes appeal to me - sexy, successful, strong men with a sense of honour and humour. My heroines - independent-minded, resourceful and far from submissive - respond to them in ways a 21st-century reader can identify with. That is not "patriarchal propaganda".

Bindel says: "I do not believe in blaming women for our own oppression. Women are the only oppressed group required not only to submit to our oppressors, but to love and sexually desire them at the same time." So, as a feminist, she believes that while reading or writing these "novels that perpetuate gender stereotypes" we cannot even take responsibility for our own actions.

Sorry, Ms Bindel, but among the freedoms I insist upon as a woman is the right to my own fantasies. I do not read fiction I find distasteful, and I don't write it either. How about updating your research for 2008 by reading another 20 Mills & Boon novels? Modern ones.